1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention are related to systems with multiple data processing units, and more particularly to reducing the memory footprint in graphics operations in such systems.
2. Background Art
Some graphics processing systems include multiple processing units, such as graphics processing units (GPUs), to allow for performance gains through parallel processing of graphics tasks. For example, a graphics-intensive game may be running that requires, or can benefit from, having the additional processing power provided by using multiple GPUs.
The multiple GPUs that are available in the system are used in several ways, including to process alternate frames that are being rendered (i.e. alternate frame rendering), or to process parts of the same frame. For example, when a frame requires complex processing that can be efficiently handled by both GPUs of a two GPU system concurrently processing the same frame, the CPU can distribute the same frame to both GPUs.
In some graphics processing modes, such as when multisampling is enabled, the memory footprint required for processing a frame in each GPU is substantially increased. For example, when multisampling or super sampling is used, each pixel of a frame may include multiple samples, thus significantly increasing the size of the frame data that is stored in GPU memory. The increase in the required memory footprint can lead to performance degradations due to scalability limitations, bandwidth limitations, and delays in rendering frames.
What is needed, then, are methods and systems that reduce the memory footprint required in each processor to process a frame.